After huge success with the animated Shreks, Andrew Adamson chose to direct The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as his first live-action film. In putting CS Lewis’ beloved tale on the screen, Adamson faced a population of Narnia devotees who hold strong opinions about how it should be shown. Undaunted, Adamson tuned into his own imagination, and wrote down everything he remembered of his childhood Narnia readings—before he actually reread the book. “I’ve loved this story since I was eight-years-old. I didn‘t want my memories, lasting impressions to be disillusioned by rereading the book,“ says Adamson. “Rereading it eventually was like returning to the house I grew up in—the book was smaller than I remembered it. C.S. Lewis’ writing depends on your imagination. As a child, you fill out the imagery. That imagery was what I wanted to put on the screen. I really remembered it as an epic story, and I wanted to tell the movie as an epic story.”

MERIN: Since many people have strong recollections of Narnia, may your using your personal recollections as the basis for the film prevented others from accessing their own recollections through the film?

ADAMSON: If you have to live up to or exceed people’s expectations, it’s always a scary, risky thing. It really comes down to the question whether a book like Narnia should be made into a film or not. For me personally, it was a great opportunity to realize my boyhood dreams and share my impressions of the book. I’ve been reassured by people along the way that I am meeting their expectations. Even Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’ stepson, who’s lived with this book all his life, would come on the set and tear up at times and say ‘this is exactly how I imagined it.’ So I tried as much as possible to tap into as much of the universal impression of the book as I could. I think if someone’s worried about that, they shouldn’t see the film.

MERIN: You’ve said C.S. Lewis’ book is smaller than you remembered it.

ADAMSON: C.S. Lewis spent more time describing meals than most other things—that‘s a blessing and a curse. There’s not a lot of detail in places where you’d think there would be. For example, in the book, the battle is very brief—yet, in my mind, I had an impression of a great battle. It’s great that I get to use my imagination—to fill the screen with creatures I‘d envisioned. It’s great that I get to draw upon my childhood— at the same time it carries that danger that we’re just discussing. I guess I prefer it because I like existing in my own imagination. As a filmmaker I like taking things from my head and sharing them with other people.

MERIN: Do you like watching Narnia with other people?

ADAMSON: It’s a great feeling. But the sad thing about watching a film you’ve made is you never get to enjoy it as a naïve experience. You never get to walk in and believe. You know too much about what went into it. That said, I still feel the film’s emotion when I watch it. At certain moments— like when Lucy finds Mr. Tumnus turned to stone and cries—I tear up. Some other moments—Aslan’s death on the stone table—were very technical for me, so it’s hard to be emotional about them. Maybe ten years from now I will. I was flipping through TV channels one day, and saw some colors that looked interesting, and realized I liked them because I put them there—it was Shrek. And I watched the film and really just enjoyed it as an audience member for the first time in a number of years.

MERIN: Do you see continuity in your move from the Shreks to Narnia?

ADAMSON: They’re about family. Although the stories are different and they use different techniques, they’re still stories about human conditions and human situations. To me, Narnia’s a family drama taken to epic proportions.

MERIN: Do you consider Narnia fairy tale?

ADAMSON: I never did. I don’t know if it’s because I was exposed to them at a very young age, but I always believed Narnia was a real place.

MERIN: What makes the stories endure?

ADAMSON: Themes of forgiveness and sacrifice that resonate today. Someone told me when he saw Lucy step through the wardrobe, it didn’t just make him remember what it was like to be a child, it made him nostalgic for childhood. We lose much of our wonder as we get older, and it’s nice to invoke it. For children, the story’s empowering. In Narnia, they’re not children, they’re kings and queens. In war-torn England, children were disenfranchised, had no control. In Narnia, everyone is waiting for the children to tell them what to do. That’s a lot of responsibility, but with responsibility comes control and power.

MERIN: Why did you begin the film in war-torn London?

ADAMSON: A line in the book reads: “[T]hey were sent away from London during the war because of the air raids.” I wanted context, a sense of reality before taking the audience into this fantasy world. Seeing children in jeopardy explains why they’re having problems. Edmond isn’t a bad boy, he’s bad because his father’s away at war and his brother’s pushing him around. I also want the audience to know immediately this is a different version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This is a big story. People come expecting to see kids in a house that would be a small British story. I wanted to say, “no it’s not—wake up everyone.”

MERIN: Will Prince Caspian be next?

ADAMSON: That’s likely, but I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to do it. I need to have some clear head space first. The story’s about the same four kids, so it would make sense to do that next before these kids get too old.